New Meizu Smartphone running on Ubuntu, codenamed Midori in works

The Chinese smartphone manufacturer Meizu has been doing quite well in terms of smartphone sales. The company managed to sell 20 million devices in 2015, which is approximately 350% more than they were able to sell back in 2014. They also released their flagship device, PRO 6 for this year. Now up next, the company is planning to release an Ubuntu-powered smartphone. Meizu released the PRO 5, which is yet another Ubuntu-powered smartphone and it was shown off during the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona.

According to a new report, the Ubuntu bug tracking page mentions the ‘Midori’ smartphone codename. This codename is completely new, and it has never been used before. If you don’t know, Meizu tends to take codenames from famous anime series “Dragon Ball”. And the Meizu MX4 was called “Arale” and the Meizu PRO 5 was called “Turbo”. So, on the same lines, Midori is also no exception and we think it’s quite an obvious clue that the company is planning to release yet another Ubuntu-powered smartphone.

So basically a new Ubuntu device is incoming, but we don’t have any other information on that device. The name “Midori” is actually the name of a little-known character from the Dragon Ball series. Considering the fact that, the previous two devices launched by Meizu were released in Android eco-system, before they became Ubuntu handsets, we believe the upcoming device could also be similar. But it could also release yet another affordable handset like the Meizu M3 or Meizu M3 Note as well. As mentioned before, these are just rumors, and we cannot confirm any information on this at this point of time since the available information is scarce.

It will be interesting to see what the company comes up with here. The company is also planning to launch the MX6 by June 30th. Meizu was also sued by Qualcomm quite recently. This lawsuit occurred because Meizu allegedly infringed on Qualcomm’s 3G and 4G patents, and the infringement applies only for Meizu’s MediaTek-powered devices. The company already released an official statement saying that they’re trying to work things out with Qualcomm in order to keep this matter out of court. Stay tuned for more updates on the new Meizu smartphone.